


The Prologue

by AlexNoelFieldingFan



Series: Beatus Harrius [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Albus Dumbledore Bashing, Baby Harry Potter, But they're dead in quite a bad way so yeah, First Kiss, I mean major Dumbledore bashing, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, James and Lily are dead, M/M, Manipulative Albus Dumbledore, No beta we're too cool for that, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Sirius Black and Remus Lupin Raise Harry Potter, Sirius does a lot of rants, Swearing, That's all the character death there is, That's it, that's the plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:42:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22941967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexNoelFieldingFan/pseuds/AlexNoelFieldingFan
Summary: James and Lily Potter are dead. And nothing can change that. But Sirius Black will do all in his power to stop their son succumbing to the same fate. He won't let Albus Dumbledore anywhere near that boy.Finished! This part of the series at least. Would ya look at that, I actually finished a fic! Not a very long one but a fic nonetheless.
Relationships: Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Series: Beatus Harrius [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1650811
Comments: 13
Kudos: 197





	1. What Happened at Godric's Hollow

“James? Lily?”

Ten years ago, Sirius struggled through the bricks and wood and whatever else, desperately trying to find some sign of life. A small part of him said he shouldn’t shout so loud, that the Muggles will hear, but most of him didn’t care.

“James? Where are you, you-”

He stopped. Some flaming red hair under a pile of bricks. He moved them aside, desperately, and was met with a face he knew all too well. She’d been his friend for years now, he was best man at her wedding, but now…

Now her fair skin was white, and cold. Her beautiful green eyes, once sparkling with life, were glassy. He closed her eyes, he couldn’t bare to see what has gone. He held her to his chest, silently sobbing for this life that had been taken. He knew no collapsing house killed her; this was the killing curse. He knew there’s no way James could be alive. He wept for his friends, for the life they could have led.

A noise startles him out of his reverie. A shifting noise, and something almost like a voice. For a second he thinks of their cat, but it can’t be. It sounds like a baby!

He moves bricks aside swiftly yet carefully, and reveals the one scrap of life left here. 

“Harry,” he whispered.

He hadn’t even allowed himself to consider Harry, to think about that poor boy, probably already dead at barely a year old. But here he was, warm, and alive, in Sirius’ arms. His fingers brushed the boy’s forehead. A scar, like a bolt of lightning, cut through it. He didn’t mind, for a baby to come out of this completely unscathed would be nothing short of a miracle, one scar is a small price to pay, and it wasn’t even bleeding. The boy opened his eyes, and smiled at the familiar face of his uncle Padfoot, not noticing the carnage around them. Sirius saw those eyes, so alive in Harry while they were - not, in Lily.    
He heard footsteps behind him, but didn’t truly recognise it until he heard a familiar voice.

“S-Sirius!”

Hagrid was blubbering, looking in disbelief at the carnage. Sirius didn’t blame him. In fact, he was surprised by his own composure.

“When they said - oh, but I didn’t think it’d be this bad…” he lamented.

“Hagrid. Lily - she’s…” but Sirius couldn’t continue. He broke into tears, and could only feel Hagrid’s large hands patting him gently on the back.

“I know, kid. I know.”

“And James? I couldn’t find him. Do you know, is he-” Sirius manages to say.

“I’m afraid so. He’s over there.”

Through eyes blurred with tears Sirius followed the hand of the giant over to the front of the house, which he must have overlooked. He stumbled over there, Harry still clutched tight in his arms, and caught sight of his friend. A strange mirroring of the boy he’s carrying, even this young. The same dark skin, and hair. They’d always looked so similar, since the day Harry was born. And here they are, separated so soon, one drawn beyond the veil, into death.

He dropped to the ground, watering the earth with his tears of lament over this brave man - this poor boy, who died in a man’s war - as he felt a hand once more on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry.”

Sirius can just find the energy to nod his head slightly, and allowed himself to be heaved up onto his feet, still clutching the child. He looked up into Hagrid’s face.

“Harry’s alive?”

Sirius nodded again.

“Don’t know how… a little baby. When-” and Hagrid broke down again. “But anyway. I’m sorry, Sirius, I’m gonna have to take ‘im.”

Sirius looks up in shock and horror. “Take him? Where, why? Hagrid, why?”

“Dumbledore’s orders, ‘mafraid. Says he gotta be taken to ‘is family.”

“Harry hasn’t got any family. He’s-” Sirius fights for control over his voice. “There’s nobody.”

“Dumbledore said ‘e’s got an aunt an’ uncle. An’ a cousin.”

Sirius’ eyes widen in comprehension. “Not - not Lily’s sister? And her husband? They came to the wedding, no idea why, they - they were horrible! Left before the ceremony. And Dumbledore wants Harry to live with them?”

Hagrid nods solemnly. “Dunno why. But you know Dumbledore - he always knows best. C’mon, Sirius, give me Harry.”

Sirius thinks for a moment. For a moment it looks like he’s actually going to hand the boy over, but he draws him back into his chest.

“I used to think that about Dumbledore too,” he says darkly. “He always knows best. Well I think that’s true enough. He knows what’s best for Harry, sure. Doesn’t mean he’ll do it. He knew what was best for them, too-” he begins to look towards James’ body but he can’t quite do it. “And look where that got them. He knows  _ everything _ , Dumbledore does. Knows how to use people.” He looks down at Harry’s face, sleeping again. Peaceful. “He will not use Harry.”

“Sirius, yeh don’t know what yer saying…”

“Oh I know exactly what I’m saying! I just can’t believe it’s taken this to help me see it. He always has, always. Dumbledore. He collects people, does Dumbledore. He builds an army without his army knowing they’re being built.”

He crouches down beside James. Beside what was once James, anyway. “He takes the best in the school at charms and transfiguration and tries to turn him into a warrior, to fight in Dumbledore's war. All he wanted was a family, all he ever wanted.”

He stood up, looked over to Lily. “He takes the best potioneer of her generation and uses her talents for his own. And she could have done anything, she could have been so brilliant, but he wasted her.”

He looked back to Hagrid. “And he takes this boy - what, fourteen? This boy who has been cast out of his only home, and he takes advantage of him, until years later that boy can’t even see fault in his mentor when he’s killed-” he pauses. He has to take a breath, and he doesn’t like the look on Hagrid’s face. “When he’s killed that boy’s friends. He’ll still do his bidding. Still take innocent lambs to the slaughter.”

For a moment Hagrid looks angry, but then he drops his head in sadness. “Yeh don’t know what yer saying,” he just said again. Quite pathetically, Sirius thought.

“Hagrid, you’re getting Harry. I’m sorry, but he’s not going to that bitch and her husband.”

Hagrid shakes his head incredulously. “Yeh going to take ‘im?”

“Yeah. I am.”

“Well, I’ll come see yeh tomorrow. Or someone will, I dunno. See how yeh feel then.”

“Feel free,” Sirius said grimly.

He wrapped Harry in the blanket he’d picked the kid up in, and tucked him under his jacket, hitting him with as many sticking and protecting spells as he could think of. He then got onto his bike, and drove off into the night.


	2. Stay or Go

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short chapter, but next chapter there will be wolfstar, I swear.

Hagrid was true on his word. The next day, he came to see Sirius. And every day for a week. After that, he brought Professor McGonagall, thinking she could talk some sense into him, but she only seemed to make it worse. Perhaps it was because, at heart, she agreed with him. Before two weeks had passed, Albus Dumbledore had turned up on the doorstep.

Sirius opened the door to him one Wednesday without any surprise. He had been waiting for this.

“Sirius,” Dumbledore said, smiling. That twinkle in his eye. It wasn’t going to work this time. “May I come in?”

“No.”

“I see. Is Harry in there?”

“Yep. He’s safe. And happy. And there’s nothing you can do to stop that.”

“I assure you, I want nothing more than his happiness-”

“Oh yeah?” Sirius had stopped playing it cool. He knew it wouldn’t last long. He’d stopped leaning in the corridor and was standing, almost in the doorway, like he was physically trying to stop his old headmaster from entering. “You want his happiness? So you want to send him to live with  _ Petunia _ ? The woman who wouldn’t even congratulate her own sister on her wedding day? You think she’s going to treat Harry right?”

“I have written a letter-”

“She hates them. Her and that husband of hers. She hated James, she hates magic, I think she even hated Lily. She will hate their son, and I will not let you let them - I don’t even know. I don’t know what she’d do but it would not make Harry happy, you hear that?”

“Sirius, please-”

“You think this is what they would have wanted? Because if you do then I don’t think you ever knew them at all. But I do know, you know.”

“What do you know?” Sirius couldn’t stand the way the old man’s eyes were still twinkling. Like he was some sort of paragon of virtue. Like he wasn’t an evil, cruel, manipulating…

“I know you don’t care. Now I am going to close this door, and you are never going to come near me or Harry again, and you are going to understand that I will never let him become another one of your pawns.”

He didn’t wait for Dumbledore to reply, just slammed the door in his face. He heard the crack of disapperation on his doorstep, and returned to Harry with a feeling of victory. There was no guarantee that Dumbledore wouldn’t return although, of course, even if he returned with an army he wouldn’t get this boy.


	3. The Visitor

Sirius wasn’t sure what he’d do if he didn’t have Harry. He’d never been one to cope well with grief, or with any strong emotions really. A bottle seemed the most likely option, but throttling Peter fucking Pettigrew to death was definitely another.

But with Harry, he hadn’t touched alcohol in - well, three weeks now. As long as he’d had him, and the longest probably since he came of age. He had to stay alive, and well, and sane, for this little boy who was depending on him.

He thought of nothing else those three weeks except for keeping Harry safe. He barely left the house, devoting all his time and attention to this new task, what he owed to his friends to keep on doing. Because they didn’t die for the war, or the cause, or Dumbledore. He knew this. They died for Harry.

But three weeks in, one knock on the door one Sunday afternoon, and Sirius was suddenly aware of one more of the hundred things that bothered him before that fateful October night. Needless to say, the biggest.

When he opened the door, he was greeted with a whirlwind that he couldn’t quite make out. He was pinned to the wall and could feel a wand under his chin. He could only tell who it was from that familiar smell. Like parchment and cigarettes and chocolate. 

Remus Lupin was pinning him to the wall.

And not in the way he’d always dreamed.

“Remus-” he choked. “Remus - what are you-”

“You - how could you - Sirius - they were your friends - and you - and you-”

“Remus, calm down,” Sirius said, somehow slipping out of the hold his friend had him in. “It’s not like you think.”

“Come back here. Sirius! Come back here!” He swung a punch, but it was weak and Sirius avoided it easily. 

He’d backed Sirius into the living room now of his little house, where Harry was in a high chair, happily playing with a piece of paper. When he saw the battle scene, however, his face contorted into an unhappy scream. At this Remus of course stopped, as any man with a heart would at the sound of that gut-wrenching cry.

“You - you have Harry?”

He rushed over to the chair, sweeping little Harry up in a dirty traveller’s cloak and fixing Sirius with an accusatory stare.

“I’m taking him away, and then I’m coming back. With aurors.”

“Remus, no, it’s not what you think.”

Remus laughed. A cold, bitter laugh. “What is it, then?”

“You think if I’d done this they’d have let me go? Let me take Harry.”

“I never thought anyone would have _let_ you do anything. Honestly, I didn’t expect you to be here, I thought you’d be with you-know-who by now.”

Remus spat every word with a malice and contempt that Sirius couldn’t bare to see directed towards him. 

“I know you,” he continued. “I know how dangerous you can be. I know that if you really wanted to avoid the authorities, you could.”

“I didn’t. Remus, haven’t you talked to - anyone? Any of the order?”

Remus looked sheepish. “I’ve been underground,” he murmured. Sirius nodded in understanding, for which Remus shot him a sharp look. Werewolves were in a particularly bad place right now, politically, since their alliance with you-know-who, and in times like that Remus always went somewhat off the map to avoid it all.

“Remus, sit down.”

Remus took the chair uneasily, still holding Harry. He was confused, this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. He was going to go to Sirius’ house to see if he was there (of course he wouldn’t be) and then have a route around, see if he could find where he was. Sirius, calm, almost accepting of his fate seemed strange. Maybe he’s trying to trick Remus but, well, Remus doesn’t think he’d do that. It’d be way more likely to get a quick stunning spell to the head and have Sirius in dog form legging it out the door. But then again, it’s not like Remus even knows Sirius anymore. The Sirius he knew would never sell his best friend out to you-know-who, never even sought power, always fought against the subjugation of anyone…

Slowly, Remus realised he was wrong.

“It wasn’t me. I didn’t betray them, I would never, you know that.”

“But you were the secret keeper,” Remus said, still not entirely trusting, although a vague outline of the truth began to form itself in his head. “Nobody else could have.”

“I… I wasn’t the secret keeper.” Sirius hung his head in shame, running a hand through his wild black hair. “I’m sorry. I thought… well, I thought it would be more obvious for it to be me. And I, I didn’t…”

“You didn’t trust yourself,” Remus finished. It’s an age-old tale, and one he’s heard from Sirius many times before.

“I guess not. So, yeah, we made Peter the secret keeper. I guess… I don’t know, in hindsight it was idiotic, but we never thought Peter would-”

“Peter? It was Peter?” Of course it was Peter, it would have to have been Peter if it wasn’t Remus, or Sirius, or obviously James, but Remus hadn’t allowed himself to consider it. “Peter would never.”

“Apparently Peter would. I don’t know, but he always - well, he always joined the biggest gang, didn’t he? The one with the most protection. He always hung around us like a little shadow.”

“The bloody-” Remus stood up.

“Remus, wait.”

“We’ve got to get him. We can’t let him get away with this.”

“Of course we can’t, Remus, of course we can’t,” Sirius said with the air of someone trying to persuade someone else off a roof ledge. “But there’s people working on it. Aurors, out there, looking for him. They’ll deal with it. Now - give me Harry.”

Remus started in surprise. Amongst everything he’d almost forgotten the baby in his arms, and handed him over. 

“You’re looking after him now?”

“Who else? I found him, in the wreckage. Under a pile of bricks, somehow alive. Hagrid was there, too, wanted to take him to Dumbledore.”

“Dumbledore? What did Dumbledore want to do with him?”

“Send him to his aunt and uncle. You remember Lily’s sister from the wedding?”

“Oh god.”

“Yeah, her. I wouldn’t let them, not ever. Not in a million years. Hagrid came round, and Minerva, and Dumbledore, but I won’t give Harry away.”

Remus thought for a moment, and Sirius feared what he was going to say. Remus had always respected Dumbledore, looked up to him, this man who let a boy into his school who never thought he’d be allowed anywhere. And while nothing could make Sirius give the boy away, it would hurt him to the core if Remus thought what he was doing was wrong.

Remus just nodded. “It’s what James would have wanted.”

Sirius let out a breath he didn’t even realise he was holding. “My thoughts precisely.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for all the people who have read and bookmarked and kudos-ed, this many people don't usually read my fics but to be honest, I am quite proud of this one. I think it'll even be finished at one point!


	4. Uncle Moony

Sirius didn’t see Remus for another week after that, and he assumed he had gone back ‘underground’, as the werewolf always put it. But a week later, again there was that familiar face on the doorstep. Smiling now, rather than snarling. His hand around Sirius’ hand as he entered, rather than Sirius’ neck.

It was a welcome change.

“Remus, what are you doing here?”

“I’ve moved. Come up here, to Manchester. To help you with Harry.”

“Really?” Sirius’ eyes sparkled at his old friend. “You’ve left London?”

“I was never really in London, I always moved around too much. But I have a flat a few streets away, and I can come help with Harry whenever you like. I figured he needs both his uncles.”

“Yeah. Both.” Although neither of them say it, it’s still weird. Both. Two uncles. Harry always had, was always going to have, three uncles. Uncle Padfoot, Uncle Moony and Uncle Wormtail. 

“Moony!” Harry squealed in delight at his uncle picking him up once he entered the living room. Harry had always been a good talker, and said his first word (broom, about his toy broom, however much each of his uncles and James had tried to make the first word about them. Sirius had claimed he’d won, because he bought the kid the broom) at only ten months old. 

“Yeah kid, it’s your uncle Moony,” Sirius said, ruffling the patch of messy black hair that already so resembled James’. “He’s gonna be coming round more.”

“Moony, daddy.”

Remus frowned. Of course it would happen. The kid wanted to know where his dad was, it was only natural. And as Sirius hadn’t been able to give a good enough answer, for Harry’s standards at least, he would have to turn to the next available uncle.

“Daddy’s gone away for a bit. So me and Uncle Padfoot are looking after you.”

“Pa’foot,” Harry repeated. He never could quite manage that. “Mummy.”

“Mummy’s with your daddy, darling,” Remus said, stroking the boy’s dark hair. Sirius didn’t trust himself to speak, he was choking up. 

The incident was quickly forgotten, or at least they didn’t talk about it. They spent the whole day with Harry, playing with him, feeding him. That’s what Sirius had spent the last weeks doing. Keeping busy so he couldn’t think.

Later that night, when Harry was in bed, and when Sirius would have been trying desperately to read, or find something on the Muggle TV (that he insisted on having, but didn’t really know how to use), he was sat on his sofa, chatting with Remus. They weren’t drinking, Sirius was scared of drinking, because he knew it would be so easy to just fall into that and ignore everything else. He would prefer to fall into looking after Harry.

“You’d make a good dad, you know,” Remus said.

Sirius sighed. “I always saw myself as being more the cool uncle. Y’know, who gives the kid their first beer and drive them to weird sisters concerts their parents say they can’t go to.”

“Hey, I guess you still will,” Remus said. They’re slightly acting like they’re drunk, because old habits die hard and with these two together their bodies expect them to be ingesting copious amounts of alcohol. Also they’re pretty tired.

“Oh, I-” Sirius said, slowly. “I don’t care, kind of. Less than I used to, weirdly. I had so many plans, about Harry. I was gonna take him to his first concert, that was very definite. James said I could, too, even if Lily-” he started to choke up. “I thought she was gonna be mad but no, she wanted to take him to his first concert. To see a Muggle band, she said. And I was like, no, you get to do all sorts of things for him, I’m gonna buy him a leather jacket and take him to see a rock band, y’know? And-”

Sirius burst into tears. It wasn’t unusual, especially late at night once Harry had gone to sleep and he was resisting the urge to buy a beer from the corner shop. He felt Remus’ arms around him, an old jumper around a new leather jacket. He could smell Remus, he always could. Remus smelt so good. 

“Hey, it’s OK, yeah?” he heard that slightly gravelly voice in his ear, gravelly from smoking since the age of fifteen. Sirius smoked too, of course, but he smoked what Remus called ‘ladies’ cigarettes’. Remus smoked the hard shit. “It’s OK to cry.”

And then Sirius and Remus were crying together, entwined in a melancholy embrace. Neither made a noise, but each knew exactly what was happening in one another’s hearts, because it was mirrored in their own.

Eventually, Remus broke apart, and held Sirius’ face in his hands. Sirius attempted to compose himself, and smiled a little as the tears subsided. Remus lent his forehead onto his friend’s.

“We’ll get through, this. We will. You and me, together. We can do anything.”

And then Remus was leaning closer, closer, closer, and Sirius couldn’t even think of anything anymore, nothing in his brain was working because this was  _ Remus Lupin _ . And  _ Remus Lupin’s  _ lips were almost touching his own and his hands were in  _ Remus Lupin’s _ hair and-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, thank you for all the support, honestly my fics never get this much attention! You're the reason this fic is actually going to get finished because I never do that!  
> Also yeah Sirius lives in Manchester and I have good reasonings why and I'm not sure if I can get them in the fic so: Sirius could never live away from a major city because he's a city boy but his family and shit are in London so yeah he just went one down.   
> And sorry I had to cut away but you know what that's their private moment and you know what happened.


	5. Hope

That flat a couple of streets away didn’t last long. It was never supposed to. Remus had only actually rented it until the end of the month, just to give him something to fall back on in case-

Remus hadn’t actually considered Sirius not reciprocating. Because that’s all he’s considered for the last however many years of his life and if he thought about it for a second, he could never do it. But sometimes, you have to realise that your friend needs you, perhaps even needs you to confess your love for him. And sometimes, you’ve got to put aside all the anxiety and doubt that’s followed you your whole life and just bloody do it.

And it might not work.

But, Remus reflected, looking at Sirius’ long, wild hair on the pillow next to him, sometimes it works better than you could have ever dreamed it would.

A month ago, Remus was just some werewolf struggling under a government who hated him, and a population who encouraged them too. A week ago, it was all so much worse, as out of the four people who accepted him, two were dead and one was lost to him forever to the grip of you-know-who. 

Now, they were still gone. And nothing would ever fill completely that hole in Remus’ heart for James and Lily. But now he had a family. Now he had the man he loved in bed next to him, and a boy who depended on him asleep in the next room. He had a house, and a family, and a purpose. A purpose he had been searching for since he left Hogwarts, and one which his… condition had never allowed him to find. No job for Remus. No emotional attachments. Just working pay cheque to pay cheque, alone. That was to be his life.

But no more.

It took him a while to accept that he could even do this. A… well, a him, should never have a child. It would a horrible thing to do to the kid, what if he… But Sirius had always been more than a match for a werewolf. And between them they learnt so many protection spells that the dark lord himself couldn’t get at Harry if he tried.

They hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the end! I think. Of this bit. There's is a sequel now, more about Harry when he's older because you know, this is only the prologue. It might get edited, there might be more chapters put in somewhere, because James and Lily never had a funeral apparently, but yeah. Thank you for everything.


End file.
